Thursday, February 26, 2015

Change direction. And again.



Unless it’s a sport fight that has a certain number of rounds to determine the winner, a real fight usually lasts only seconds. Campfire Tales From Hell


No-gi at Bellevue.

Single-leg takedowns. Put head on the inside (ie, against opponent's flank).

Same, but now you clamp opponent's ankle beween your legs and shove hir backward for 2 hops before changing direction and dragging the leg to the side so that s/he falls on hir ass. Note that when you grab the leg and put your head on the inside, you should deliberately press that shoulder to hir thigh. When you do the final drag, you should switch your head to the outside and press the OTHER shoulder to hir thigh.

Same, only now you assume s/he is fighting that final drag, so you abruptly  switch direction AGAIN and shove hir straight backward, snatching at the free leg so that it's now actually a double-leg. It doesn't take much, though- you're just sort of pawing quickly at it, not grabbing it. Make sure that you get to the side as s/he falls so that you don't end up in guard.

Sprawl N/S on opponent's turtle, then spin around, get both hooks in and turn yourself into a backpack. Note that you should not sit upright as if you are riding a pony to stick your hooks in. Your chest should remain plastered to opponent's back at all times. Also- remember to not leave your head far enough forward to get grabbed and yanked over hir shoulder by your head. That sucks. And finally- the near side hook should go in first. Do not spin to the opponent's back and throw your far leg over and try to stick that one in first.

A little positional sparring from closed guard and half guard.

One spar with Chrisanne.

I had to stop and take my contacts out halfway through the class because they were giving me problems. It was unpleasant to revisit the whole vulnerability-of-being-half-blind while sparring thing. I thought that once we started grappling, it would be fine, but I still had an uneasy feeling in my gut even though I wasn't really using my eyes at that point. It makes me worry a lot about what would happen in a real violent encounter once my glasses got knocked off. I wish contacts were not so uncomfortable for me and did not mess so badly with my near/far vision. The glasses are a very serious tactical handicap- even moreso psychologically than physically.

2 comments:

  1. It may help conceptually to think of the switch from single to double leg as "blocking the far leg".

    I am not grabbing the far leg so much as I am using my hand/arm to block it from going out to obtain base.

    It's like the judo footsweeps. They're not usually actual sweeps of the foot - they are blocking the person from going in a direction and then - fwunt - pushing/pulling them over.

    Also, I dealt with the contacts thing by getting LASIK. I know $ is a tough bullet to bite, but it's so worth the elimination of hassle and not worrying about vision ever again.

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  2. Thank you. That is exactly how the professor termed it.

    I don't think I could ever get Lasik. The idea of surgery on my eye(s) is pretty much the mos terrifying thing I can imagine. here are a few things that I am a huge baby about, and eye injuries/possible blindness is one of them.

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